Exchange 2000 SBS question

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June 29th, 2004, 03:49 PM
CXGJarrod

Exchange 2000 SBS question

Prospective Client has Exchange 2000 on Windows 2000 Small Business server. The server is servcing maybe 10-15 email addresses.

The problem is as follows. The server has 512MB of ram. However, in the Task Manager, the system says that that it is using 1.5 GB of ram. In the exchange enviroments that I have seen (for this amount of people) it was not using nearly that much ram. Another wierd thing about the server is that it has a lot of small processes running (1mb to 5mb) but only a few that looked like they might be suspicious. Also, the inetinfo.exe was using about 150 mb or ram. (I am assuming this is for webmail since thier website is hosted at Yahoo Small Business) Does this sound like a bit high to you guys?

The server is as follows:

Dell Poweredge (forgot model number)
1.7 Ghz Intel Processor
512 MB ram
2 30 GB hard drives that are mirrored
1 60 GB Hard drive for data

Server is also patched, but has no virus protection, so I am a bit worried about a viral infection. (Will scan with an online virus scanner the next time I go over there)

One last question and I will stop editing this post: What spam control /blacklists do you use for Exchange? They are getting a ton of spam every day.
June 29th, 2004, 04:11 PM
ss2chef

Re: Exchange 2000 SBS question

Quote:

Originally posted here by CXGJarrod
Does this sound like a bit high to you guys?

Not really...Exchange is a piggy. Wont hurt to restart services to see how fast the ram gets eaten

Quote:

Server is also patched, but has no virus protection, so I am a bit worried about a viral infection. (Will scan with an online virus scanner the next time I go over there)

Good Idea...:)

Quote:

One last question and I will stop editing this post: What spam control /blacklists do you use for Exchange? They are getting a ton of spam every day.

There are many 3rd party products with the Tumbleweed line being tops IMHO...
For cheap virus and spam protection, check out http:/www.mailarmory.com. Only $2 per month per protected address and works very well.
June 29th, 2004, 04:14 PM
Tiger Shark

You seem to be ok. Looking through my server with 1.5Gb of RAM the task manager is reporting 2.5Gb. Looking through the processes I find that Store.exe is running at almost 1Gb for my 300 or so users on this server. It seems like the store is seen/reported as memory while it is probably really virtual.

Your inetinfo does seem a little high. Mine is running at about 60mb but then again I use direct SSL from the outside world. I'm not sure how yours would work with the Yahoo but maybe it pulls the mail from yahoo to itself for speed purposes. That being the case I would expect it to be taking more space. My SSL uses the store directly, yours might not.
June 29th, 2004, 04:15 PM
CXGJarrod

Re: Re: Exchange 2000 SBS question

Quote:

Originally posted here by ss2chef
Not really...Exchange is a piggy. Wont hurt to restart services to see how fast the ram gets eaten

Good Idea...:)

There are many 3rd party products with the Tumbleweed line being tops IMHO...
For cheap virus and spam protection, check out http:/www.mailarmory.com. Only $2 per month per protected address and works very well.

I might suggest some Ram then as well. I will try to restart the services and see what happens. Thanks for the spam link, I will check it out.
June 29th, 2004, 08:43 PM
SexyBadGirl

Queus circus music
June 30th, 2004, 01:45 AM
morganlefay

I have worked with a couple of SBS 2000 and the exchange will use as much memory as you have....and releases it when needed by other services.

This is normal on the SBS 2k

Nothing like a reboot to free up memory in a windows machine. ;)

I have a machine with pretty much the same hardware and number of users and it has run like that for 2 years now.

Other apps on it are AV, and intranet sitte and PSQL database and no real performance issues....to date.

If performance starts to degrade...add more memory.

Hope this helps in some way

MLF
July 2nd, 2004, 03:32 PM
mohaughn

Morgan is correct. All versions of Exchange2000 and 2003 will allocate as much memory as possible to the store.exe process. The store then manages that memory to the best efficiency of the exchange services. If kernel requests that the store release memory it will release incremental chunks to the kernel. Once the kernel releases those memory handles, exchange will take them right back.

Here are some great articles about memory management in exchange. Note that this applies to 2000 and 2003. Exchange5.5 and earlier managed memory much differently.

291988 A Description of the 4 GB RAM Tuning Feature and the Physical Address Extension Switch http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=291988

283037 Large Memory Support Is Available in Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=283037

328882 Exchange Memory Use and the /3GB Switch http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=328882

815372 How to Optimize Memory Usage in Exchange Server 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=815372

823440 You Must Use the /3GB Switch When You Install Exchange Server 2003 on a Windows Server 2003-Based System http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=823440

The third article describes how exchange allocates memory. This is also the article to pay attention to if you would like to trim back the amount of memory exchange is taking. Unless you are performing this action to try and correct a specific performance issue I would not recommend changing from the defaults.

As for why inetinfo.exe is chewing up memory, that is also from exchange. Exchange2000 is really an extension of IIS with a large database attached(the store.) The IMAP4, POP3, SMTP, NNTP, and HTTP protocols are all served up by IIS. Without IIS, exchange2000 will not run. So it is usual to see IIS also using up memory and CPU.

Trendmicro has one of the best offerings for virus/spam/content filtering for exchange. Brightmail is also another good package. I have also used NAI Groupshield extensively, and have had a lot of issues with it in the past, but it is maturing into a better product. It will be interesting to see if MS really buys NAI what type of groupshield-exchange integration will take place.

PS- Make sure you are running the latest service packs and hotfixes for both exchange and Win2k. There were quit a bit of performance/memory code enhancements made in Exchange SP3. E2k prior to SP3 had a lot of memory leaks if you tried to push the high end of the subscriber per server limit(somewhere around 8-12k medium usage mailboxes.)